In telecommunications parlance, the "last mile" is endlessly debated in
terms of wired versus wireless, symmetry versus asymmetry, and bandwidth
needs - real, perceived, or actually used. This story is about the "last
centimeter" - its bad design, unreliability, and public absence when you
really need it.

Think of it: the lowest common denominator in being digital is not
your operating system, modem, or model of computer. It's a tiny piece of
plastic, designed decades ago by Bell Labs' Charles Krumreich, Edwin
Hardesty, and company, who thought they were making an inconspicuous plug
for a few telephone handsets. Not in their wildest dreams was Registered
Jack 11 - a modular connector more commonly know as the RJ-11 - meant to be
plugged and unplugged so many times, by so many people, for so many
reasons, all over the world.

Not a jack of all trades
How many RJ-11 clips have you broken? I am astonished that something that
probably costs less than a penny separates me from the Net so often. It
seems I'm constantly carrying a cord with a broken RJ-11 connector at one
end or the other. Mind you, this is caused not just by normal wear and
tear, but by a design that causes the small plastic clip on the male
connector to catch on various articles when you pull the cord out of a
briefcase. The half-life of an RJ-11 plug on the road must be less than a
month.

Ironically, some new RJ-11 female connectors add insult to injury - they
are spring-loaded for better contact, which renders a clipless male plug
useless. At least in the past you could pop it in and hold your breath.

Nonetheless, the RJ-11 has become a world standard. More than a
billion RJ-11s have been manufactured to date; as it happens, the connector
is considerably more common in fax machines than handsets in most
countries. In any case, there is little likelihood that this physical
standard will be replaced by anything other than wireless connections - the
usability and reliability of which is a whole separate story. Suffice it to
say that most people will be plugging in for a long time. Since we'll have
to live with the RJ-11 for a while, we can surely make it easier to use
than it is now.

Dongling participlesDongle supposedly comes from the verb to dangle. If you do not have one,
consider yourself lucky. I travel with four.

A dongle is a hardware key and cable assembly that attaches to an
external port; one of mine takes the otherwise solid female part of an
RJ-11 and introduces flimsiness and delicacy to map the thin profile of a
PCMCIA card - what a really dumb name - into the roughly square form factor
of the RJ-11. My advice to anybody planning to purchase a laptop: don't buy
one that does not have a built-in RJ-11. If you do, you are simply adding
another point of weakness in your connectivity and will in all likelihood
find yourself with the wrong dongle just when you need it.

Airport dilemma
One reason to join airline clubs is to have access to RJ-11s - and, often,
free local phone service. This is fine for those who can afford a
membership, and if the airport you happen to be in at a given time has a
club with RJ-11 jacks. Otherwise, you are too often captive to a national
public phone system that seems not to have heard of data communications.
With the exception of a rare AT&T pay phone, which looks like a pregnant
Sega game, your only hope is an acoustic coupler. But this is yet another
thing to carry - and it's not particularly reliable at that.

Surely we can build more pay phones with RJ-11 jacks. In fact, an
RJ-11 only pay phone would not need a keypad, credit card reader, or coin
slot; your PC would send the number and billing data. This would be the
least expensive "phone booth" ever made.

Hotel malice
In some countries, especially those in western Europe, phones are still
hardwired into the wall. In others, phones might use any one of nearly 200
phone jacks. Still, more and more places are accommodating or switching to
the RJ-11 in the wall, in the phone, or as an auxiliary jack in the handset
- the latter being the most appropriate in a hotel room.

Some hotels still don't have such auxiliary jacks in the handsets,
offering the lesser convenience of the RJ-11 in the wall. But because hotel
managers also have learned that constant use breaks the clip, many cut it
off, making the plug a onetime "permanent" connection, never to come out
again. That is inexcusable. Even the most benign digerati will use anything
from a penknife to a corkscrew to reopen the jack, the effect of which is
well deserved but devastating. Get with it, hotels.

I was thrilled to see that the latest Zagat hotel guide includes a
ranking of computer friendliness. About time.

Getting it straight
Yet even if you are lucky enough to get a room with an easily removable,
seemingly usable RJ-11 jack, don't be surprised if it does not work - i.e.,
there's no dial tone. Though the plug itself has become fashionable, in
some cases the wiring is not consistent, especially in small telephone
exchanges. The RJ-11 module has up to six wire conductors, but a simple
phone connection needs only two. And while most of the world agrees on
which two to use, just enough places (usually hotels, alas) don't.

This is one of those exasperating instances in which we cannot even
agree which way is up. As best I can tell, it's a 50/50 bet as to whether
you will find the clip on the top or the bottom - sometimes it is even set
sideways. (The problem isn't just with technicians installing hotel wiring:
two models of PowerBook had it one up and one down.) While this may seem to
be nitpicky, the problem is - literally - more than meets the eye. Because
RJ-11 sockets are often sufficiently recessed that you cannot easily see
the jack's orientation, you have to use trial and error - and error does
the plug no good.

So the next time you travel, the next time you connect, think about
this critical little piece of plastic. Don't you wish someone would make an
unbreakable connector, even one priced as high as US$100? Maybe it is time
for designers across the board to agree that RJ-11 clips should go on the
top. There's no real reason to prefer the top to the bottom, but if we all
did it one way, over time we might just get it straight.